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Supercollision cooling in undoped graphene

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 109–112 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Carrier mobility in solids is generally limited by electron-impurity or electron–phonon scattering, depending on the most frequently occurring event. Three-body collisions between carriers and both phonons and impurities are rare; they are denoted supercollisions. Elusive in electronic transport they should emerge in relaxation processes as they allow for larger energy transfers. This is the case in undoped graphene, where the small Fermi surface drastically restricts the allowed phonon energy in ordinary collisions. Using electrical heating and sensitive noise thermometry we report on supercollision cooling in diffusive monolayer graphene. At low carrier density and high phonon temperature the Joule power P obeys a PTe3 law as a function of electronic temperature Te. It overrules the linear law expected for ordinary collisions which has recently been observed in resistivity measurements. The cubic law is characteristic of supercollisions and departs from the Te4 dependence recently reported for doped graphene below the Bloch–Grüneisen temperature. These supercollisions are important for applications of graphene in bolometry and photo-detection.

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Figure 1: Tunability of the Bloch–Grüneisen temperature and noise thermometry set-up.
Figure 2: Electron temperature in graphene as a function of supplied Joule power.
Figure 3: Supercollision cubic law.
Figure 4: SC coupling constant A as a function of carrier density.

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Acknowledgements

The research has been supported by the contracts ANR-2010-BLAN-MIGRAQUEL, SBPC and Cnano-2011 Topin’s and Grav’s.

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Author notes

  1. A. C. Betz and S. H. Jhang: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, ENS-CNRS UMR 8551, Universités P. et M., Curie and Paris-Diderot, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

    A. C. Betz, S. H. Jhang, E. Pallecchi, R. Ferreira, G. Fève, J-M. Berroir & B. Plaçais

  2. Laboratoire de Photonique et Nanostructures, CNRS-UPR20 CNRS, Route de Nozay, 91460 Marcoussis Cedex, France

    E. Pallecchi

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  1. A. C. Betz
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Contributions

A.C.B. and S.H.J. conducted the noise measurements; R.F. performed the calculations of the supercollisions; E.P. participated in the early stage of the experiment. G.F. and J-M.B. supported the experiments; S.H.J. and B.P. wrote the paper; and B.P. initiated the experiment.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to S. H. Jhang or B. Plaçais.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Betz, A., Jhang, S., Pallecchi, E. et al. Supercollision cooling in undoped graphene. Nature Phys 9, 109–112 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2494

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